


Instinct

by caramelchameleon



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Monster Falls AU, eye gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:31:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1469923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramelchameleon/pseuds/caramelchameleon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>wires got crossed somewhere in my head and i made connections between monsterfalls au & his name was billy mischief. don’t encourage me. i have Plans and they are awful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [His Name Was Billy Mischief](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/45007) by mairzydozydiveydoats. 



> originally posted on my tumblr. deerper and the rest of the monsterfalls designs are not mine.

Dipper is sorry for the deer in the forest, if this is how they feel all the time.

His instincts are strong, incredibly so. The fact that half of his friends seem to be predators of one sort or another doesn’t help, but he’s constantly on edge now, heightened senses working on overdrive. He’s hyperaware of Grunkle Stan’s fangs and Robbie’s stench of death and Wendy’s everything, and one day when he can’t take it anymore he makes some nonspecific excuse and flees into the woods, trembling.

Being prey is awful.

He wanders until finds a space among the underbrush where he can ease himself in and awkwardly lie down, folding his shaky legs under him. His ears swivel and twitch, listening for threats, and when neither the sounds or the scents of the forest reveal the least danger, he feels himself finally relax. Sighing, he takes one last look around and pulls out the journal. Reading the familiar entries will hopefully be the last push he needs to calm down entirely.

He’s just about to quickly flip past the enigmatic, red-splattered pages on Bill Cipher when his ears perk up, unconsciously. Another deer, a full one, runs past his hiding spot, crashing through the noisy underbrush. His legs unfold - without his input! - and start running after it.

"Hey, hey, wait wait wait!" Dipper tries to dig his hooves into the turf and stop, but his deer instincts won’t respond. He stumbles a few times, catches himself, and surrenders to the urge to keep moving. Journal clutched to his chest, he risks turning his head to look behind him, wondering if he’s being chased. Two more deer lope past him, gracefully, but he doesn’t see or sense anything that seems dangerous. And, he realizes, his human side is panicky and upset at the loss of control, but his deer side is utterly calm. This isn’t running away from some predator. This is running to somewhere.

“But where..?” he says, out loud, tucking the journal safely back into his vest.

His headlong, stumbling run doesn’t stop until he reaches a clearing deep in the woods, rimmed by a rough circle of black-and-white birch trees. There are other deer there, standing solemnly around the perimeter and fixing their gazes on the center of the meadow. Dipper glances around at them as he trots, placidly, to an open space in the circle. 

“Heyy, guys. Don’t suppose any of you could, uh, tell me what’s going on?” One or two of them favor him with a brief glance, then turn away. Dipper stops, shifting his weight uncomfortably as he struggles to regain control and run far, far away. “No? Nope.” A cold breeze rustles the leaves, makes him shiver. “Worth a shot.”

As one, every deer in the circle - Dipper included - bends their forelimbs and bows their heads to the ground. Dipper cranes his neck, with an effort, but can’t make anything substantial out over the brim of his hat. The world outside the circle grows dim and monochrome, and a light begins to grow in the center. Dipper shuts his eyes-

A horribly familiar laugh rings out, and Dipper yelps. Jumping upright, he prances and paws at the ground nervously, struggling against the compulsion to remain right where he is. Nothing he can do can wrench his eyes away from the floating, laughing figure. It’s Bill Cipher - there’s nobody else he could be - but he looks fully human, exaggeratedly tall and lanky, in a tacky yellow suit and eyepatch. He’s watching Dipper struggle with his deer instincts with every sign of amusement, single eye twinkling with sadistic merriment.

“Pine Tree! So glad you could make it!” Dipper’s hooves plant themselves and refuse to budge as Bill floats closer, looming over him. “Hey, so how’s being a cute little deer working out for you, kid? Fun, right?”

“I don’t know what you did, Bill Cipher, but if you don’t let me go this instant -” He balls his hands into fists and tries to smooth out the tremor in his voice. His deer instincts are still unbelievably, unnaturally calm. Something’s wrong.

“Who, me? Ha! I can’t take credit for this one! I haven’t done a thing to you!” He smirks, leering down at Dipper. “You came here all by yourself, genius! You and all the rest of these guys!”

He gestures to the deer around the circle with a sweep of his arm. They watch him with fixed, placid stares. “I don’t believe you,” Dipper says, breathing shallowly. “You did something. Why can’t I move? What do you want with the deer, huh? Why’d you bring us here?”

Bill Cipher makes a dismissive gesture and Dipper, startled, feels his mouth snap shut. “Ha! Better! Alright, I’ll spell it out, just for you.”

"Deer are sacred animals to the demon - nah, the god - Triangulum. And just in case you weren’t keeping up -” His one visible eye winks broadly, and his head shifts abruptly to a new shape. Now, he’s human-shaped from the neck down, but floating, unconnected, above his neck is a flat yellow triangle, faintly patterned with bricks and prominently featuring one staring eye - looking like the Bill Cipher that he’s more familiar with, until an almost invisible horizontal seam beneath the eye splits, and grows into a grin. “That’s me.”

“And now,” the demon continues, comfortably reclining in midair, “a certain little pine tree has come to join my congregation. I must be a lucky, lucky guy!”

“What - What’s that supposed to mean?” Dipper asks.

“It means,” and, abruptly, Bill jerks forward to bring his face close to the boy’s, too close - “that WE” - Dipper shrinks back as far as he can, still frozen in place - “are gonna have some FUN!” Dipper pins his long ears back, staring, frozen, into the demon’s wide, deranged eye. 

“For now,” Bill continues, casually leaning back again as though nothing happened, “I think I’ll keep it simple.” Sitting upright in midair, he extends both arms. It must be some sort of signal to the real deer, who bound away in all directions; they’re still not afraid of him at all, Dipper notices, peripherally. Most of his attention is still fixed on the demon before him, as Bill Cipher stiffly crooks his right arm at the elbow, hand held flat.

“You aren’t going to tell anyone what happened here today,” he says, with the inflection of a command. “You won’t mention me, or the other deer, or this clearing. Nothing went wrong. Nobody needs to know.”

Dipper grits his teeth, trying to find a response, but Bill is already continuing. Folding his right hand into a fist, he sweeps his left arm in a deliberate, ritualized arc, pointing it squarely at Dipper. “Second! In nine days, you’ll return to this clearing, alone. Nobody will follow you. Nobody will know where you’re going.” His eye goes wide and vacant, and the bricks of his face begin to crumble off, breaking away to float in midair. His voice drops in pitch as he stares blankly into the distance. “I’ll be waiting.”

Dipper watches as Bill quite literally pulls himself together, pieces melding back into a smooth whole. “So! Third!” He curls his outstretched hand in a beckoning motion, and Dipper takes a shaky step forward into Bill’s reach, deer limbs once again betraying him.  
With the same stiff motions, Bill Cipher extends his right index finger, a tiny flame dancing on the tip, and places it squarely on Dipper’s forehead. Blue fire dances down the demon’s arm and onto him. The blue flames cling, horribly, to his skin, and burn; he screams, distantly registering Bill Cipher’s delighted laughter.

“That’s all I’ve got for ya!” Bill says, floating up and out of reach. “Enjoy! See you in nine days, chump! So loooooooooong-" Blue and yellow light flashes, briefly, and Dipper shields his eyes against it, wincing.

When he can see again, the forest’s color has been restored, and his forehead is tingling oddly. He reaches up to touch it, wincing, but the pain of the original - marking? branding? is mostly gone now. Resigned, he brushes his bangs over his forehead to hide it, unable to distinguish exactly what it is by touch.

Experimentally, he takes a step forward on his shaky legs, and finds that his body is fully under his own control again, for what it’s worth. Unnerved by the staring, eye-like markings on the circle of birch trees, he backs out of the meadow and turns away.

“Huh. Wonder if I can find my way back.” he says, resigned.

Taking a few hesitant steps in what he thinks is the right direction, he looks around at the unfamiliar forest, biting his lip. He regrets not paying more attention when his deer body had gone and dragged him into this.

A few more steps and Dipper stumbles over a tree root, nearly careening into the flanks of a deer, one of the largest ones he’s ever seen. It regards him solemnly and with a hint of disdain. He’s never been sure what to make of the real deer of the forest, but this one seems to be expecting something of him. Tossing its head and magnificent rack of antlers impatiently, it paces forward a few steps, then turns to look at Dipper.

“Oh,” he says, nearly tripping over himself as he scrambles to keep up. “Are you going to show me the way?”

It continues on another few dignified steps without responding, then pauses again to let him catch up. That seems like a clear enough sign. Dipper presses, uncertainly, “Did, uh, did Bill send you?”

It snorts and continues onward, leaping over a fallen tree. “That’s probably yes,” Dipper concludes, clambering awkwardly over the log.

The buck isn’t much of a conversationalist, and it bounds off the instant Dipper finds itself back on a path that he recognizes. “Thanks,” Dipper calls after it, and manages to marshal his clumsy limbs into something like a trot.

Mabel is the first person he sees outside the Shack, elbows leaning on the edge of her “totally-not-a-mermaid” tank and tail waving lazily. The clean, fresh water has been made to appear artfully murky by painting the glass sides of the tank a translucent, disgusting brown, and Mabel wears a sort of makeshift belt around the join between her fish and human halves which is clearly and obviously fake. The omnipresent tourists are too dumb to tell the difference in any case, and the tip jar beside her looks to be filling up nicely. She waves cheerfully to him and he waves back, picking his way along the lawn to her side.

“Hi, Dipper! Jeez, where have you been?” she asks, leaning back in the tank and letting her hair spread out in the water. “You’re all sweaty and junk.”

“Nowhere!” he says, a little strained. “Nothing happened, it was fine!” He hadn’t meant to say that! 

“Mmm-hmmm,” Mabel said, smiling. “Suuuure.” Mabel was smart! She would figure out that he was lying. Smart, smart Mabel…

He opens his mouth to explain that his deer instincts had apparently taken over - that part, at least, should be innocuous enough. Right? “Okay, okay, I went for a walk and got jumped by a mountain lion,” Dipper hears himself say, appalled. “I got away and then I had to find my way back. That’s all.”

Mabel laughs and splashes water at Dipper’s face. He yelps. “Okay, right. Let me know when you wanna tell me what REALLY happened.”  
Dipper sighs and scrubs at his face, only to be drenched again when his sister dives under the surface, scrunching her face against the glass to pull faces. “Blub blub blub…”

Dipper wrings out his hat, resignedly. He’ll try again later.

It doesn’t work, later. Not when he tries to tell her, or Grunkle Stan, or Soos. He rubs his fingers over the raised, tender mark on his forehead, exasperated and afraid.

Eventually, he manages to duck everyone else long enough to sneak a peek in the mirror. His birthmark is faded and dull, overlaid with a new symbol, one that he’s seen before, in the journal, all over the town, even on the windows of the Shack itself. A triangle with an eye.

That night, he tries to at least update the journal with what he’s learned. “Deer are sacred animals to the demon Triangulum,” he writes, or tries to write, but his hand wavers and shakes, and the pen dries up and refuses to write. “Bill Cipher is capable of placing marks,” he tries, and the pen slips out of his hand and clatters on the floor. All that remains on the page is an illegible scrawl.

He finds a pencil instead, and tries for one letter at a time, frantically trying to outthink the curse. No message here, nothing like that! He’s just writing letters, and maybe they’ll happen to spell a word, but it won’t have anything to do with Bill… He gets as far as “H - E - L,” in shaky, malformed letters, before the tip of the pencil snaps, and he throws it away, exasperated. 

Mabel, watching from her makeshift ‘bed’ in a repurposed bathtub, looks vaguely concerned, but he snaps the journal shut and feels himself smile reassuringly at her. “Sorry. It’s fine.”

"Okay, weirdo. Quit being such a weirdo! I know you’re hiding something, and I’m gonna find out."

Please, please, please find out, he thinks, but all he says is, “Whatever. Goodnight, Mabel.”

"Goodnight, Dipper!" she replies, narrowing her eyes. "I’m watching you."

"Haha, right. Yeah," he says, and leans against the wall, deer legs folded under him. There’s no good way to sleep in a centaur body, but that’s not why he’s uncomfortable, tonight. Someone else is watching him, too.


	2. fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which things get worse

Waiting for nine days is torture.

Dipper tries everything he can think of to get through to his family that something isn’t right. Trying to say it out loud doesn’t work. Whatever curse Bill Cipher had laid means that he sticks to the story about the mountain lion when he tries to mention the day in the forest, however casually. Any mention of Bill at all makes him painfully choke on his own words. As for writing it down, he’s tried pencils, pen, markers, dirt, sand, a burnt stick, yarn, twigs, acorns, and spilled coffee. Everything either breaks or slips out of his shaking hands. The triangular mark on his forehead burns agonizingly when he tries to brush his bangs aside to reveal it. He tries to think through the problem logically, checking the angles and making increasingly elaborate plans, but fails. Even when he’s on his own, he can’t think out loud, or write lists and plans for himself, which means his usual problem-solving methods are out the window. He paces, hooves clicking, until his new legs are sore.

Every night, he dreams about about staring eyes, and he knows that his struggles are being watched. Mabel is suspicious, rightfully so, and he does his best to encourage her. After the first few days, she gives up on teasing out the answers by asking direct questions, because his treacherous mouth denies it every time. But on the fifth day, the whole crew - Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Wendy - haul Mabel’s wagon down to the lake to give her some space to swim properly. Dipper wades cautiously into the shallows and settles down with a sigh, watching Soos lumber past him. They’d had to talk him out of trying to do cannonballs when he’d first changed, on the grounds that the dock wouldn’t hold his weight, and he’d probably have emptied the pond entirely. Far too heavy to float, he spends these lakeside excursions seated on the bottom or wandering around making friends with the fish. His clay ends up thin and runny afterwards, but he holds together without problems and he’s never stayed in long enough to wash away entirely. At least he gets to go in the water at all; Dipper doesn’t trust his delicate little fawn legs to keep him afloat. He’s seen deer swim before, but trying it for himself when he still trips on his own hooves on a regular basis? No thanks.

Wendy appreciates the water almost as much as Mabel, because her shaggy fur must be awful in the summer heat. She dives in without hesitation and strikes out toward the far shore. Dipper can smell wet dog, or more accurately wet werewolf, even from this distance, and he watches her graceful swimming with a sigh.

So he sees when Mabel pokes her head out of the water and grabs her shoulder, making her pause. Dipper doesn’t mean to listen in, but sound carries over the lake, and his big ears aren’t just for show.

“Wendy, can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure thing. Shoot,” is the laconic reply, but Wendy stays attentive, treading water and watching Mabel curiously.

“Can you help me keep an eye on Dipper?” Dipper’s forehead flares with pain for a second, but he mentally cheers. He knew he could count on his sister - smart, smart, suspicious Mabel! “I think he found something in the forest but he’s being all weird about it and he won’t tell me anything. Please, can you make sure he doesn’t go off alone again?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Wendy says. “No problem, sister.” She puts her shaggy hand on top of Mabel’s head and playfully shoves her down, then dives to join her as she squeals and laughs, tailfin raising huge spray as she thrashes. Dipper relaxes, scratching restlessly at his forehead as the pain subsides. Wendy will watch out for him, and everything will be fine.

Soos’s head rises laboriously from the water, dripping and draped with pondweed. “Hey, dude," he booms. "I bet we could find you some water wings if you wanted to try the swimming thing again." "Sure," Dipper says, levering himself upright. "Let’s do it."

 

He has a plan for the ninth day, admittedly not a nuanced one: never be alone long enough to slip away from the Shack in secret. He might not be able to fight Bill’s compulsion to return to that clearing, but he hopes he can at least alert his family. That means, unfortunately, donning the Miraculous Centaur Boy outfit and volunteering for a double shift in the Mystery Shack. It’s a sweaty, awful costume that covers his real legs and backside with artfully unconvincing fake ones, complete with a ratty, knotted horse tail. He and Mabel had sewn it together, and he’d managed to fend off almost all of the inevitable glitter; he’d allowed her to comb some into the tail and still regretted it, because it was still shedding sparkles everywhere he walked. In any case, he spends the entire day indoors among the fake exhibits, posing for pictures and enduring Grunkle Stan’s endless patter (“Our next marvelous attraction, folks, is this hideous abomination! Half human, half horse, com-PLETE-ly authentic, and if the generous and deep-pocketed among you would care to visit our gift shop later, feel free to purchase a souvenir…”). His deer half is always skittish and fretful under this sort of attention, but today the discomfort is magnified threefold. His breaks to visit Mabel’s tank become more and more frequent, and he still nearly sweats through the itchy, stifling costume. Mabel is boundlessly enthusiastic in her duties, namely splashing water over him to relieve the worst of the heat. He endures the pointing and the stares, the nagging annoyance about being surrounded by the tacky fake exhibits. The Mystery Shack finally has something authentic to show; he’d just rather it wasn’t him.

Grunkle Stan, at the head of the next gaggle of tourists, favors him with a truly stony glare when he catches Dipper trying to slink toward the exit early. He smiles sheepishly and returns to his post, ignoring the restless itch that sets his tail twitching and his fur on end. He won’t be able to hold back much longer. He needs to slip away, in secret, if possible, and get to the forest. He needs to get to Bill.

When the last tourists drive away, he knows the time is right. He ducks into the gift shop and unzips the Centaur Boy costume with a sigh of relief, stepping out of the awful thing one leg at a time. Wendy is leaning on the counter with cell phone in hand, apparently oblivious to the world, but she raises one arm to give him a lazy wave as he shakes his left hind hoof free of fabric.

“Hey, Dipper. Everything okay?” “Sure, sure,” he says, a little too fast. “Everything’s fine. I’m fine.”

“You seem kinda nervous,” she says.

He laughs, unconvincingly. “Just had a long day - uh - you know, so, I’m gonna take a little, I think I’m gonna take a walk. Outside. Just need some fresh air. Be back soon, don’t follow me!”

Wendy looks up at him, raising one eyebrow, but all she says is, “‘Kay, dude. Have fun.”

He tears out of the Shack at a clumsy run and hopes, desperately, that he can trust Wendy to follow.

He expects to be led in a straight line, like the last time, but instead, his legs veer off the path and clamber up a hill, pausing a moment at the top. He brings a curiously numb hand up to his forehead and brushes his bangs aside - not on purpose. He supposes Bill must be doing it; the emblem on his forehead doesn’t burn on contact with the air like usual, but it feels tender and raw, and a passing breeze that just touches the sensitive skin makes him shudder. His ears swivel restlessly for a moment, listening, before his body suddenly leaps forward, pelting full-tilt down the hill and leaping nimbly over rocks and dips that would normally trip him up. He ducks low-hanging branches and tries not to panic as he follows a winding, convoluted path through the forest, occasionally circling over his own tracks or wading through cold streams. He’s soon exhausted, completely lost, and half-sick with worry. Will Wendy be able to follow the trail? How well can she smell, really? But he has to have faith, she’ll find him, surely. She has to.

He finally scrambles awkwardly up something that isn’t quite a cliff, but is much too steep and rocky for his comfort. He uses all six limbs and manages to drag his ungainly lower half over the edge, then looks up into the impassive faces of two does. One of them bends down to nudge his side, gently enough. He takes the hint and gets to his feet, spotted flanks heaving. They escort him through the last stretch of the woods, to the unnaturally perfect circle of birch trees.

Dipper steps inside and stares at the demon already hovering at its center. Bill Cipher still looks outwardly human, but his yellow suit is now textured with crisscrossing ridges that form a brick pattern. Half-curled up in midair, knees practically up to his chest, he turns his head to glare at Dipper. Dipper gasps; whatever’s behind Bill’s eyepatch is leaking an oily black fluid, which drips slowly over his sharp cheekbones. Bill scowls, and his teeth are sharp as knives. Color leaches out of the world around them.

“You’re LATE,” he hisses, and Dipper pins his ears back, frozen to the spot. “AND you’ve got the damn WEREWOLF on your trail. Do you enjoy making things difficult for me, Pine Tree?”

His face flickers away and shifts to the floating triangle, the way Dipper remembers him doing the first time, but now his gash of a mouth is full of crooked, narrow fangs, like needles, and the triangle itself is long and attenuated, more isosceles than equilateral. Dipper wishes he could run. The deer part of him is afraid, too, but not the fear that drives him to flee; it wants to placate, to soothe, to submit.

Dipper tries to collect himself, to sound tough and unruffled. “What’s wrong with you, Cipher?”

Bill seethes, gnashing his teeth for a moment, then collects himself. “None of your business, kid!” he spits, narrowing his eye.

“It is too my business. Why are you human? I mean, human-ish?”

“I’m NOT a HUMAN,” he says, top point of the triangle twisting fluidly, then beginning to fracture, cracking and grinding raggedly. His hands ball into fists as he glares down at Dipper, his bricks slowly flaking apart and drifting in vague orbits around his staring eye. “Get it right, brat, I’m a demon, I’m Bill Cipher. I’ll look like this if I want to.”

He can’t stop himself from blurting it out - “The river? That’s it, isn’t it?” He’s seen the monsters that touched the Fluvius Cantatis and came out human - the gnomes, manotaurs, and mermen - but what would it do to a demon who already had the power to shapeshift?

Blue flames, then red, break out all over Bill’s body as he screeches, distorted with anger, “SHUT UP!”

Dipper leaps straight up in the air; he hadn’t meant to, but it doesn’t feel like Bill’s control, either. It’s simply an automatic response to visceral terror, a deer response, and he’d like nothing more than to run, run, run. But whatever spell Bill’s laid on him keeps him rooted in place and all he can do is cower, belly nearly scraping the ground. Flames crackle and roar around Bill, then spread to the grass; Dipper shrinks away from the heat, forehead burning worse than ever. The demon twists and snarls in the center of a column of flame, then begins to laugh, maniacally.

Just before they reach Dipper, all the flames sizzle out with a dull hiss. Bill appears to concentrate a moment, then shifts back to fully human appearance, although his smile is still too wide to be natural.

“Scared ya, didn’t I?” He smirks and pats out a last patch of flame on his unscathed suit, then straightens out, his feet settling lightly on the scorched ground. The burnt grass crunches under his feet as he steps closer, looming over the petrified deer-boy.

“You don’t ask questions, Pine Tree. When you need to know somethin’, I’ll tell ya, but THAT,” he snaps, visible eye burning with a brief red glow, “is NOT something you need to know. Capiche?”

Dipper is too fearful even to nod his head, but Bill quickly shakes off the anger again, returning to a casual, almost eerie calm. He reaches down and takes Dipper’s chin in one hand, eye narrowing thoughtfully.

“Now, if I want to get anything done tonight, I’d better get started! Something quick and simple. But something you won’t forget." He snaps his fingers cheerily with his free hand, smiling like a circus showman. Or a predator. "Ha! This oughta do. Hold still for me, kiddo."

It’s a command, not a request. Dipper feels himself freeze all over, only able to breathe shallowly, eyes locked on Bill Cipher’s face. The mercurial-tempered demon adopts a look of studious concentration and holds up his free hand, flat. With the ritual motions that he recognizes as Bill’s spellcasting, he folds down two fingers, leaving the pointer and middle finger extended, then gives his wrist a sharp twist. The air around his hand glows blue, and Dipper feels a strange tingle behind his eyes -

Then there’s a sharp yank, an awful, wet noise, and pain. Dipper hears himself scream. He can see nothing at all.

“Haha! Silly me!” Bill cackles, keeping his firm grip on Dipper’s chin. “I only meant to grab one! What a clumsy mistake!” There’s another tingle and a sickening pop, and Dipper’s vision abruptly returns, at least on the left side. He stares, horrified, at Bill Cipher, whose attention is focused on an object floating in midair, surrounded by a thin blue haze. A round, whitish object. Dipper nearly begins screaming all over again. Cipher lets go of the boy’s chin and plucks the sphere delicately out of the air.

“Boy, Pine Tree, you’re sure looking green around the gills!” the demon exclaims, rolling the eye idly between his thumb and forefinger. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’d be lying! Come on now, you only really need one.” He gives an exaggerated, one-eyed wink, grinning.

Dipper squeezes his remaining eye shut and tries to collect himself. This can’t be happening. It’s only a nightmare, yeah, that must be it; and besides Wendy will catch up to him soon. No problem. Just another nightmare.

“Look at me,” Bill says, curtly. “Don’t turn away.” Dipper’s eye snaps open and he looks up, just in time to see Bill flourishing the eye between thumb and finger. with an ostentatious twirl. His face shifts smoothly to the enigmatic pyramid shape. “For my next trick, ladies and gentlemen… your full attention, please! I’ll make this fine young boy’s eye disappear.”

Dipper is absolutely riveted to the grotesque spectacle, unable to look away or cover his remaining eye. Bill Cipher is a showman like his grunkle, and he’s milking the moment with sadistic, no, demonic glee. The triangular head tilts back until it’s not quite parallel to the ground. Bill Cipher shuts his eye, completely, and what opens again along the same seam isn’t an eye at all, but a gaping, slavering mouth, lined with neat rows of teeth. The hideous maw yawns wide, and Dipper catches a glimpse of a throat deeper than Bill’s two-dimensional anatomy could possibly allow. The demon holds Dipper’s eye up high, then drops it neatly in his mouth, the jaws shutting with a steely click after it. Even after everything he’s seen in Gravity Falls, Dipper nearly throws up.

“Yum,” Bill Cipher says, opening his eye once more and making ostentatious lip-smacking sounds. “I think that’s all we’ve got time for today, kiddo. I’ll call you when I want you again! And remember - I’ve got my eye on you." He extends a finger and taps Dipper gently, almost playfully, on the forehead. The symbol there, Bill’s emblem, flares up, painfully. "Hahahahahaha! So long, sucker!"

There’s a moment of vertigo, a brief sensation of blue light, and then Bill Cipher and the surrounding birch trees disappear. Dipper lands heavily on the side of a rocky hill and tumbles down, yelping. When he rolls to a stop, breathing heavily, he squeezes his eye shut and tries to take stock. He can feel fresh bruises and scrapes from the fall, and lingering nausea from whatever magic Bill had used to teleport him away. He’ll need to get up, eventually, and find his way back; any hopes he had of Wendy finding him now are crushed. Swallowing, he tries to push himself up, wincing at the pain in his delicate limbs, and looks straight into the face of a wolf.

His scream dies in his throat, and his entire body locks up, paralyzed. The deer instincts tell him to freeze, absolutely freeze, his life depends on it; maybe the predator won’t spot him and will go away. It’s too close for that! He quivers, heart pounding, trying to override the deer’s visceral panic. If he could yell, wave his arms, maybe he can convince it he’s a human, not a deer, nothing worth attacking.

The wolf makes a yelping noise and bounds forward - excitement at finding such easy prey? It thrusts its muzzle in his face and sniffs, then licks his cheek wetly, just under his wounded eye. Dipper braces himself, waiting for the first bite. The beast gives a little whine that sounds like… concern?

Then it opens its mouth and says, in a familiar voice, “Dipper! What happened?”

Belatedly, Dipper recognizes the shaggy reddish-brown fur. He allows himself, just for a moment, to hope. “W-wendy?” he manages, mouth dry. It could still be some sick joke of Cipher’s, shapeshifting into one of his friends.

She butts her head against his chest, frantically nuzzling close. He yelps, wrapping his arms around her neck. “Mabel and I were worried sick about you! Dipper, what the heck are you doing out here? Your trail is all over the place! What happened to your eye? Aw, Dipper…” She nudges him upright with her furry snout, and he clings gratefully to her thick fur, trying to balance on wobbly, aching legs. “Hang on. I gotcha, little dude. Just relax.”

She begins to shift and stretch, paws extending into arms, and smoothly turns the movement of standing upright into gently lifting him off the ground as she completes the transformation to a half-human form. Dipper can feel himself shaking all over. Too many shocks for one day. He clings to Wendy as she runs through the forest with a long, easy lope. Her fur smells like mortal danger to the deer, but it’s warm and soft, and her arms around him are comforting. He slips into a daze of semi-consciousness, only vaguely registering when he’s handed from warm, soft arms to cold and rock-hard ones, which cradle him with surprising tenderness.

He wakes up in bed, lying awkwardly on his side and propped up by pillows and blankets. Drops of water splash on his face. He looks up to see Mabel peering over the edge of her bathtub, concern written all over her face.

“Hi, Dipper,” she says, subdued. “Wendy had to go home ‘cause her parents called. Are you okay?”

Dipper touches his face, finds his missing eye covered in bandages. Mabel reaches over and pulls his hand away before he can start picking at it. “Grunkle Stan said, um, you can borrow one of his spare eyepatches. Are you feeling okay?”

He manages to roll into a more natural sitting position and nods, sheepishly. There are bandaids and dressings over his scrapes and bruises, and he can smell the sharp sting of disinfectant. “Dipper, what happened? Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?” She sounds desperate, betrayed.

Dipper swallows, afraid of being betrayed again by his lying tongue, but he makes an attempt, anyway. “Bill Cipher-“

He stops, startled. No mountain lions, no evasions! That’s what he’d meant to say! Mabel looks grim, but not surprised, like her suspicions have been confirmed.

“Your forehead.”

He pushes back his bangs and feels the scar on his forehead pulse dully with pain, against the background of his other aches. “He brought me to the woods, there’s some kind of -” He gags and chokes on his words again before he can mention Bill’s power over the deer in the forest. The curse is still there - for some things but not for others?

“Some kinda what?”

Dipper tries to think - what exactly had Bill said? He’d ordered Dipper not to say anything - about the events of the first night, specifically. But this time, he’d sent Dipper away without cursing him into silence! Was he too upset? Pressed for time? Simply too arrogant to think that what Dipper could say would hurt him? Well, he’d prove that stinking triangle wrong.

“M-magic,” he settles for. “And he made it so I c-can’t - I can’t -” He gestures at his throat, desperately hoping that Mabel will get the message.

“So you can’t tell me?” Mabel guesses, and he nods, emphatically. “Then the mountain lion was-”

He nods, ignoring a stab of pain from his forehead. Mabel grins, water sloshing around her as she raises a fist in triumph. “THAT’S why you didn’t tell me anything!”

“Yes! Mabel, I wouldn’t hide anything from you. I swear. I mean, not on purpose. Not something like this.”

“Thank you, Dipper! I was so worried!” She barely avoids dousing him with water, reaching out with both hands to give him a hug. He hugs her back, wincing slightly, but her cool, wet arms feel comforting against his feverish, overheated skin.

He stops when he hears a heavy tread on the stairs, the sounds of claws clicking on the wood and a tail dragging behind. Dipper hastily brushes his bangs back down as Grunkle Stan stoops to fit his wings through the door. With a smile that’s almost sheepish (though fangs entirely spoil the effect) he offers Dipper a bottle of aspirin and a glass of water, thrusting them forward stiffly.

“Good to see you awake, kiddo,” he says. Dipper swallows the painkillers, gratefully, and watches Stan lay out a simple black eyepatch by the side of Dipper’s bed. Hopefully it’s been washed.

“Anything else I can get you?” he asks, gruffly, like he’s not used to this. Not the most impressive bedside manner, but it touches Dipper’s heart to see the old man trying to be sincere for once. He shakes his head no.

“Well, then,” Grunkle Stan coughs, and a puff of dust floats in the air for a moment. “There’s a little something I found in the shop, extra inventory, can’t shift it, you know how it is. It’s a sort of, uh, good luck charm.” He thrusts a hand in his pocket and comes out with two necklaces, each one holding a pendant of some sort of green stone. “You’d make an old man happy if you wore them. They can be our friendship bracelet, or whatever. Thing.”

“Sure, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel says, and Dipper nods. A fleeting expression of relief passes over Grunkle Stan’s face for a moment, and he hands over the jewelry, one to each twin.

“Thanks, kids.” He gathers up the pill bottle and the empty glass, hastily. “Get some rest, Dipper. We can take another look at that eye tomorrow.”

When Stan is safely back down the stairs, the twins wordlessly examine the necklaces together. The stone is mottled green, smooth and cold; it tingles oddly under Dipper’s fingertips.

“This is too nice to be the junk Grunkle Stan sells in that gift shop,” is Dipper’s conclusion.

“Maybe it’s a real good luck charm!”

“Could be,” Dipper concedes. On an impulse, he touches the cool stone to his aching forehead, and gasps when the pain immediately recedes. He shuts his eye and leaves the stone there, sighing in relief.

“What?” Mabel demands.

“It - it’s making my head feel better.”

“Ah-ha! It’s a healing charm!” “Then why’d he give one to you? In case you get hurt too?”

“Maybe he just had two. This is so cool!” Mabel eagerly hangs the charm around her neck, and Dipper follows suit, tucking it into his shirt. The cool stone nestles comfortingly against his chest, and he relaxes, feeling his throbbing headache dwindle and recede.

He stays up a little longer with Mabel, filling her in on Bill Cipher and making plans and theories. There are still gaps in the information that he simply can’t bring himself to say, but, especially as the stone pendant warms to the temperature of his skin, he finds the words coming more and more easily.

Eventually, Grunkle Stan yells from downstairs, “Mabel! Let your brother sleep!”

“Oop! Sorry, Dipper!” Mabel reaches over to squeeze his hand one last time, then slips further into the bathtub. “Goodnight!”

“Goodnight, Mabel,” Dipper says, and listens to the splashing as she turns around adroitly in order to reach over and turn out the light. Dipper lies down awkwardly on his side again and tries to get comfortable.

He dreams about blue fire and eerie laughter, but none of it can come close enough to touch him.


End file.
